Chương 39: Blowing Up The Forge

Meno tried to craft like he had not heard Bradbaron say anything and initiated the Uncommon II sword pattern. The seven runes flashed above the forge. Meno repeated them under his breath and still saw Aurelia in his head, swinging a weapon too big for her hands while people laughed. His hammer came down clean through the first physical marks. Heat. Shape. Turn. Spine. Edge. He placed the Water Essence perfectly, watched it melt into blue-green light, and waited for the rune prompt. He missed the third rune.

"Damn it." He recovered the next one, then missed the fifth the same ugly way. The blade held together. The physical craft stayed clean enough to make the failure feel petty. By the time he quenched, wrapped, pinned, and ground the edge, the sword looked good to anyone who had not paid for the mistakes. [Pattern Complete] Type: Uncommon II Charmsteel Sword Quality: 89% — Fine Durability: High Tidal Edge: Deals 20% increased damage against Fire-aspected and Dust-aspected enemies.

[Blacksmithing Level Up | Level 21] A third of the way to level 22. Meno stared at the sword. Fine. Again. Viewers: 27, 043. The number had stabilized, which was the polite version of saying most people had left. Twenty-seven thousand people still would have been divine intervention a week ago. Now it felt disappointing. rune memory wife diff still profit sell to bald menace open her stream coward Meno lifted his head.

"Bradbaron." A few seconds passed. Then Bradbaron's bald head appeared at the forge entrance like a summon. He did not grin this time. He only walked over, opened the trade window, and waited. Smart. Meno placed the Fine Uncommon II Charmsteel Sword in the trade slot. Bradbaron entered 200 gold, and Meno confirmed. [Trade Complete] [Balance: 1, 764 gold, 10 silver] Bradbaron took the sword and left without a word. Meno stood at the forge with his hands still over the workstation.

He had promised himself the door would stay closed. He would leave Aurelia alone. He would stop checking the bruise. It would fade if he stopped pressing on it, because that was how pain worked when a person had discipline. He lasted maybe four hours. Apparently his heart had queue priority over his brain.

"This is stupid," he muttered. Then he opened her stream. She had 1, 143 viewers. For a new streamer, that was absurd. Meno had streamed for years into fewer than fifty people while pretending the chat box was broken, the algorithm was hostile, or his time slot was cursed. She had gone live for the first time and already had enough viewers to fill a small theater, mostly because she was connected to his clips and failing in public.

Her chat moved like a sewer with usernames until one line caught his eye and stuck there. rich girl swing faster maybe daddy can buy timing Meno's jaw tightened. Aurelia stood near the Westmarket resurrection shrine at Level 1. She had not edited herself this time. Real face, real height, real posture. Her hair was tied back, her starter outfit looked plain enough to offend her usual standards, and she held a two-handed mace nearly as tall as her body. The weapon made the whole situation funny until it became sad.

She walked toward a boar outside the shrine road, set her feet, and swung. The mace hit the boar with a clumsy thump and took a small chunk of HP. The boar squealed, turned, and charged. Aurelia sidestepped, lifted the mace above her head, and activated her class skill. A faint silver glow wrapped her body. She stopped moving, and the boar hit her. Her HP did not move. The silver light held around her like a thin shell while she kept the mace raised. One second passed, then another. She tried to release the attack.

The boar struck first. The silver glow flickered out just before impact. Her mace still hit, and the boar lost maybe ten percent HP. Meno leaned closer despite himself.

"Okay. What is that?" Aurelia reset her stance quickly. Too quickly. She raised the mace again, silver light returning, but this time she did not hold the charge. She attacked almost immediately, landing a heavier hit that took around twenty percent of the boar's HP. The next boar hit landed after her attack and finally damaged her, dropping her health by about fifteen percent. She repeated the same pattern until the boar died and her HP sat low enough that a stiff breeze would have made content.

Meno rubbed his mouth. The playstyle disgusted him. Swing Master rewarded movement through rhythm. False Wings made space a resource. Her class seemed built around standing still and inviting the world to hit her first. She waited for her HP to regenerate and opened her class panel. Meno read it before he could tell himself he was not watching. [Class: Heavy Striker] [Ability: Power Strike] Activate to power up your next two-handed weapon attack. Gain +100% damage per second while powering up.

While powering up, gain a shield equal to 20% of your maximum HP. Taking any steps breaks the power-up. If the shield breaks, the power-up breaks. Meno blinked.

"Wait." he likes it wife class review heavy striker actually good? say it say it"That's actually really good," Meno said, irritated by the truth.

"That's ten chain stacks per second, basically. No ramp through hits. Just time. The shield lets her bait attacks without losing health. She can hold, block with the shield, release after the enemy's swing, then reset." Meno loved the shield immediately. HP seemed to scale mostly with level, but armor defense would keep Power Strike alive longer, and plate action-speed penalties barely mattered if the class already froze her while charging. Heavy Striker in plate might be disgusting if played correctly.

She was doing it completely wrong. Meno kept his hands off her chat for five seconds, which was the entire extent of his growth. He typed furiously. Meno: bait attack with shield then cancel and start pumping again release attack after first hit then bait again you wont take any damage For one second, he thought she was not reading chat. Then her viewers started copying the message with his handle attached.

HUSBAND SAYS BAIT ATTACK more like stalker free coaching bait attack with shield read him read him Aurelia's face tightened when she looked at chat.

"I don't need your help," she said.

"I will figure it out myself." Meno closed the stream. she parried you rejected again five second discipline folded instantly not even friendzone Meno stared at the anvil and wondered why the hell he had done that. One message. One stupid little backseat-gamer instruction fired into her chat like he had any right to stand there and correct her. He had told her to do it alone. He had said she should prove herself.

Then he lasted a handful of seconds before shoving his fingers into the process because watching her get mocked bothered him more than his own advice mattered.

"Lame," he said under his breath. He picked up another Charmsteel Bar. The next craft got all seven runes right. Maybe anger helped. Maybe embarrassment narrowed the world. Maybe he had finally stopped trying to remember sounds and started seeing the shapes properly. Soh, Nah, Ruh, Mah, Wah, Vel, Thun. Each rune sank into the Water Essence cleanly, each hammer bind locked the magic into the charmsteel without smearing, and the blade took on a sharper blue-green line than the Fine versions had managed.

[Pattern Complete] Type: Uncommon II Charmsteel Sword Quality: 100% — Perfect Durability: Maximum Tidal Edge II: Deals 20% increased damage against Fire-aspected and Dust-aspected enemies; slaying them restores weapon durability. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. [Blacksmithing Level Up | Level 22] Meno held the sword up. For the first time since he started blacksmithing, the result made the gold drain feel like it had a pulse.

"Tidal Edge II," he said.

"Durability restoration on kill." Against fire or dust enemies, the sword did bonus damage and repaired itself on kill. That was not flavor. That was route tech. In the Melrai Dunes, volcanic zones, dream-burned mobs, anywhere with fire or dust aspects, durability loss could stop being a wall and start being part of the loop. Finally, crafting had given him something that looked like an answer. Chat tried to buy it, steal it, name it, ruin it, and tell him to sell it to Bradbaron all at once.

Meno put the sword safely into inventory.

"Not selling." He leaned both hands on the workstation, still thinking about the process. The whole blacksmithing system was weird. It asked for speed, precision, dexterity, then memory. At Common, that had made sense in a clean little way. Hit the marks. Shape the metal. Finish the weapon. At Uncommon, runes entered like a second game stapled on top. But it still felt boxed in. A VRMMO should have more than one correct rhythm. More room to force a mistake into a result.

The forge showed prompts, whispered runes, punished drift, and handed out grades like a machine with a clipboard. The rune sequence was even streamer-safe: Meno saw the symbols privately and heard the whispers privately, while the stream got neither unless he said the sequence aloud. Viewers could not simply screenshot and solve it for him. Early tier, maybe that was enough. Later, more runes would make even chat assistance useless.

There would be too many symbols, too little time, and probably variations that punished anyone who tried to turn magic into karaoke. Still. Why say runes at all? Why speak them, then hammer? Why not carve them into the weapon? Why not inscribe the symbols directly? Maybe that was Enchanting. Maybe Blacksmithing was only allowed to bully magic into metal with a hammer, while Enchanting got the fancy pen. Aurelia's voice cut through his memory. I don't need your help. I will figure it out myself.

Meno straightened and walked to the trainer. The blacksmith looked up like he had expected trouble and was disappointed to be correct.

"Can you craft a weapon without following the recipe exactly?" The trainer stared at him for a long second.

"There are infinite ways to waste materials." Meno waited. Nothing else came.

"That's not a no." Meno returned to the forge with the thought already growing teeth. He wanted a one-handed sword, but the normal ones were too short. That had been the whole dagger problem in a different outfit. Reach mattered to him now. False Wings made vertical space playable. Bosses filled arenas with hazard fields. A longer sword meant safer contact, easier chain preservation from bad angles, maybe even bigger Hundredfold Cleave reach if the system was generous or lazy. He could use more bars. More fuel.

Beat the blade longer, push the weight forward, then pull balance back toward the grip. Keep the two wraps and two pins, force the handle classification to stay one-handed. A lie, but a narrow one. Then he remembered the Ashen Crown Tail Spike. Meno slapped his own forehead. The spike cut elemental bodies. It resisted fire. The Water Essence was magic, yes, but it behaved like a fluid elemental effect inside the blade. He had been speaking runes and hammering them because the system told him to.

What if he carved the shapes instead? Chat noticed his face. bad idea face oh no smiling weird stop ban inc? crafting exploit incoming Meno selected Uncommon II Charmsteel Sword like a man possessed. The seven-rune sequence flashed once above the forge. Soh. Nah. Ruh. Mah. Wah. Vel. Thun. This time, Meno focused on shape. Not the syllables. The hook of Soh around the central stroke. The narrow bite of Nah. The curl in Ruh. Mah's split line. Wah's angled backhook. Vel like a bent spear. Thun heavy at the base.

Then he stopped following the craft. The prompts came anyway. He ignored the standard length marker. It flashed angry red. Meno hammered past it. The charmsteel stretched longer than the pattern wanted. The forge tried to pull him back toward the sword outline, showing bright borders where the blade should end. He added another piece of Charm Forge Fuel when the color began dying and beat the metal farther, forcing the heat to stay alive. The player at the next station shouted, "Hey, your forge is flaring!"

"Busy," Meno said. The system screamed in little red judgments while he added a third Charmsteel Bar. The pattern tried to reject it. The new metal sat wrong on the main blade, bright and separate, like a patch sewn onto skin. Meno hammered until the seam stopped being a seam. [Warning: Forge Overdraw] He fed the forge again. Flame rolled up the station, high enough to scorch the edge of his sleeves. The Soma-X7 bit back with heat feedback through his arms. His HP ticked down in tiny fire-chip cuts.

Stepping away would lose the shape. He added another two Charmsteel Bars. Five total. The blade became ridiculous. Too long. Too thin at first. He widened it with angled strikes, then drove weight toward the centerline, then beat the balance back toward the grip by narrowing the base and shaping the tang aggressively. The sword wanted to become two-handed. The system flickered around the classification like it could not decide whether to call security. One-handed. Unknown. Two-handed. Unknown. One-handed.

"Stay," Meno growled. The Water Essence prompt appeared, and Meno threw the essence onto the blade. It melted outward in a sheet of blue-green light, waiting for spoken runes. When the first rune prompt flashed, Meno did not speak. He pulled the Ashen Crown Tail Spike from inventory and drove it into the Water Essence like a claw through wet light, carving Soh straight through the floating magic. [Invalid Method Detected] The forge screamed.

He hammered the cut rune into the charmsteel before the magic could close over itself. The blade rang, the second rune flashed, and Meno carved Nah through the light. The Water Essence fought him, trying to smooth back into a single flowing channel. He threw more Charm Forge Fuel into the fire. The forge flared around him, bright enough that two players backed away from their stations.

"Stop doing that!" someone yelled. Meno ignored them. His HP dropped below seventy percent. He carved Ruh, but the line went crooked halfway through. The magic slipped under the spike and tried to fold toward the wrong edge. Meno corrected with a hammer strike hard enough to send blue sparks over the bench. Mah came next and tried to spill into the blade's side. Meno fed the forge more fuel, and the fire rose into an inferno. [Invalid Method Detected] His HP dropped below fifty percent.

An NPC apprentice shouted for the trainer. Another player abandoned their craft entirely and ran for the door with a half-shaped spearhead still in their tongs. Meno threw his last Water Essence onto the blade when the first exhausted itself into thin steam. He carved Soh again to bind the extended channel, then Nah, then Ruh, then Mah. Each rune had to be cut in order and hammered before the Water magic healed over the scar. The system kept marking failure. Fine. Let it. He fed more fuel.

The fire surged hard enough that guards started gathering outside the forge doors, hands on weapons, unsure whether this counted as crime or craft. The blacksmith trainer stood near the central platform now, face hard, arms folded, watching the station burn around Meno without stepping in. Meno's HP fell to thirty percent, and the runes kept coming. Wah. Carve. Hammer. More fuel. Vel. Carve. Hammer. More fuel. Thun. The final rune resisted like it had weight.

The Tail Spike dragged through the blue-green magic, shaking in his grip. Meno leaned into it, teeth clenched, shoulders burning under the capsule feedback. The rune cut open. He hammered it into the charmsteel with one brutal strike. His vision was a wall of red invalid notices. [Pattern Deviation Exceeded] [Standard Craft Evaluation Suspended] He kept going. By the time he dragged the blade to the quench trough, his HP sat at ten percent.

The trough hissed like an animal when the weapon entered, and steam blasted across the station, hiding the forge for half a second. Someone screamed. The guards outside shouted for space. The trainer swore, low and sharp, cutting through the noise better than any bell. Meno pulled the blade free, too long by any sane weapon logic. Absurdly long. The grip assembly almost failed when he wrapped it because the blade wanted to register heavier than the handle allowed. The classification flickered again.

He pulled the wrap tighter, fingers aching under haptic pressure, seated both infused pins hard enough to bruise his thumbs through the capsule feedback, and slammed the pommel alignment into place before the system could finish changing its mind. One-handed. Meno dragged the crazy-long edge across the grinding wheel, and the whole weapon trembled between categories. [Variant Evaluation Initiated] One-handed. Unknown. Two-handed. One-handed. The final spark died. For one breath, the forge was silent.

Then the runes lit across the blade. White-blue light erupted from the carved channels, bright enough to turn the whole workstation into a silhouette. Players shielded their eyes. The guards cursed. The blacksmith trainer took one step forward and swore again, louder this time. The glow faded. Meno ignored the notifications stacking at the side of his vision and looked at the weapon. Calling it a sword felt dishonest.

It was almost as long as he was tall, thin and elongated, with a narrow blade stretched into a brutal line. The handle remained one-handed by some technicality that deserved trial. The charmsteel held a faint blue-green rune path from base to tip. He inspected it. [Pattern Complete] Type: Uncommon II Charmsteel Rune Spire Quality: 100% — Perfect Durability: Maximum Deepwater Rune: Twenty consecutive hits charge the blade. Activate to remove one debuff from yourself.

Designed by PrayerBeadGod: Extreme reach while retaining one-handed classification. WHAT IS THAT EXPLOIT LAMP POST BUILD AI DIRECTOR MAD POST TECH ALIVE HE MADE A SPEAR SWORD DESIGNED BY PRAYERBEADGOD Viewers: 43, 219. Meno lifted the Rune Spire carefully. The weight was real, heavier than a normal one-handed sword by enough that lazy swings would ruin him. The reach, though, was disgusting. It extended far enough that his first test thrust nearly clipped the edge of the next workstation before he corrected.

"Okay," he said slowly.

"This might be awful." Chat disagreed with immediate violence. BROKEN INSANE LAMP POST MASTER jump poke meta that reach is illegal Hundredfold telephone pole"It's clunky," Meno said, rotating the blade with both hands for safety even though the system allowed one.

"Long swing time if I use it like a sword. Probably terrible in tight spaces. Chain count might suffer because recovery is heavier. But if I stab with it—" He stepped back, held the grip one-handed, and thrust. The tip crossed a stupid distance.

"Yeah," he said.

"Rapier logic. Stabby-stabby. Huge reach. Safer contact. Might make air hits way easier." False Wings changed the value immediately. He could jump, kick off air, and still tag a target without committing his whole body into melee range. Against anything with debuffs, twenty hits could charge a cleanse. Twenty was a lot. For him, twenty was Tuesday.

"The rune effect is good," Meno said.

"Debuff removal after twenty consecutive hits. Not free. Worse than Tidal Edge II against fire and dust because no damage amp, no durability restore. But against anything else, especially casters, this might be way better." He looked along the blade again.

"Also, it has my name on it." designed by divorce creator tag value do not sell A new prompt opened. [Pattern Discovery] Charmsteel Rune Spire added to known variant patterns. Creator attribution recorded. Pattern may be taught or rediscovered. Meno's thoughts snapped toward gold so fast it felt automatic. That was not just a weapon. That was a pattern: custom reach, one-handed classification, active rune cleanse, creator tag. Guilds might want it. Duelists might want it.

Any class that needed one-handed compatibility and extra reach might want it. Even if the exact sword was awkward, the pattern proved the forge could be forced. Chat screamed not to teach it. worth more if only you know let them cook monopoly pattern cartel arc do not trust Bradbaron DO NOT SHOW TRAINER Meno looked at the next prompt. [Blacksmithing Level Up | Level 23] [Blacksmithing Level Up | Level 24] [Blacksmithing Level Up | Level 25] His mouth opened. Then the final notice unfolded.

[Profession Evolution Available] Condition met: Perfect rune-channel weapon crafted. Blacksmithing may evolve into Fluxforge Smith. Fluxforge Smith: Craft rune-channel gear with active magical effects. Accept Evolution? [Y/N] Meno stood in the smoking public forge, ten percent HP, guards outside, chat losing its mind, a nearly man-sized one-handed sword in his grip, and a profession evolution prompt glowing in front of him. The trainer's voice came from behind him.

"What did you do?" Meno stared at the Y.

"I found the correct way to waste materials."